• Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I feel like “the right gets a big showing early on but ends up losing” is a regular feature of modern French elections. It seems like it’s happened multiple times in my lifetime.

    • Contravariant@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      In their presidential elections at least it’s pretty much by design. It happens because they have 2 rounds.

      The first round the far-right option gets a relatively large amount of votes. Then the round after only 2 options remain, so anyone who doesn’t want the far-right option just votes for the only other option. Not sure what happens in general elections, but presumably it’s somewhat similar because there’s still 2 rounds.

      As far as election systems go it has quite a lot of obvious flaws, but it’s perhaps not quite as bad as first past the post. At least it makes the tactical voting a bit more straightforward.